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Willard F. Libby - Facts

Affiliation at the time of the award:University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Prize motivation: "for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science"

Field: nuclear chemistry

Prize share: 1/1

Work

Carbon is a fundamental component in all living material. In nature there are two variants, or isotopes: carbon-12, which is stable, and carbon-14, which is radioactive. Carbon-14 forms in the atmosphere when acted upon by cosmic radiation and then deteriorates. When an organism dies and the supply of carbon from the atmosphere ceases, the content of carbon-14 declines through radioactive decay at a fixed rate. In 1949 Willard Libby developed a method for applying this to determine the age of fossils and archeological relics.